We All Get Broken

The following material is part of an effort to give a voice to clients that have a story to tell. The content is of each client’s choosing and it is my sincere hope that the weight of each piece, once borne alone, often in secrecy and shame, can, when shared, become much easier to bear. The stories that chain us to our past can instead become the very fabric that binds us to each other. I am grateful for each person that has chosen to contribute time to this project.

I am a strong person. mentally, spiritually and emotionally. Most of the people that know me will tell you the same.  It is a strength born out of necessity.

Knowing  this about yourself can sometimes make difficult situations a bit more difficult…simply because having great inner strength does not allow much room for weakness.  So being weak and needing help of any kind is not something I can easily do.

But my sweet, beautiful child had a substance abuse problem and once I laid down my motherly denial and admitted this to only myself, the total reality of the situation brought me to my knees. It was just too much for me to look at, too much for me to hear and too, too much for me to share. Adding to this  shame, sadness, and heartbreaking disappointment  was the heavy weight of knowing that my beloved grandchild did not have a mother.

The weight of all of this was crushing and I knew I needed someone to help me get back up.

But finding myself weak and broken and in desperate need of what I saw as “repair” was very hard for me to understand.

Therapy as a way to fulfill that need for help crossed my mind many, many times but was very difficult to embrace. The people around me were so familiar with my ability to keep moving through the obstacles that they missed seeing my great and overwhelming struggle in dealing with this, one of the greatest challenges of my life.

Being an adult child of an alcoholic,  I don’t air my “dirty laundry” with, well, hardly anyone. The secrets of my life are things I hold onto very tightly and there is so much of me and my life that I just can’t share with anyone, not even my closest companion. So sitting down in front of someone that was going to expect me to verbally vomit out all of those secrets was just too hard for me to consider…. but I knew I desperately needed someone to help me get back up.

However, after much soul searching and prayer, I embraced the concept of therapy as right for me. I spent a lot of time researching all of the qualified professionals that were available to me in my area. I knew that it would have to be someone that I could relate to, someone that I would feel  comfortable with and someone that I could be completely open and brutally honest with. I knew enough about therapy to know that if I couldn’t go into it offering complete transparency and be who I am then it wouldn’t be beneficial. This was a big step for me  so I wanted to find the right “fit “.

I was so very fortunate in finding the exact right, perfect person to give me that help I was so in need of. My therapist and I fit inside the same space. He gets me, he listens, he guides me and he has been my biggest cheerleader and my greatest support when there was no other.

After months of watching, listening and just being in that  space with me, I was able to deploy some of the mental and emotional tools he provided in order to understand that no, I would not always understand and yes, it was ok to stop enabling (I am an awesome fucking enabler, I own that.) These were just a few of the many awakenings he has brought to me. He  helped me get back up and I am so grateful that I found the strength to go and find him.

I share all of this to say that  I found myself broken by some of the shit of life and thought “I’ve got this”. But I didn’t even come close.

I understand now that we all get broken from time to time and we all need help from time to time to fix what life has broken in us.

I’m strong…I’m a fucking life warrior…but I was a broken fucking life warrior that needed some help….. and that’s ok.